Circuits realized in flip-chip technology are widely known. In flip-chip technology, two semiconductor substrates lying in two planes, one above the other, are connected. For example, a semiconductor chip may be connected to a carrier medium or a base substrate. For connection of the two circuitry units, instead of wire bonds, so-called bumps (solder-coated or hard-cladded protuberances) are used. For example, in ball bumps, a wire is bonded to one of the substrates and subsequently melted off or pulled off. In this way, an electrically conductive raised point (protuberance) is created, which, when the two substrates are placed one above the other, may be brought into connection with a contact point of the opposite side—for example, through thermocompression.
On the substrates, monolithically integrated circuits are customarily constructed, whereby the bumps serve for electrical connection between the circuit elements. Individual bumps, however, may also be provided for the sole reason of maintaining a distance between the two substrates. The bumps are also commonly used for heat dissipation. A flip-chip module may be provided with its own transmission and/or reception antenna and, where appropriate, with its own power supply, so that autarchic transmission I reception modules come into existence. Patch antennas, which are metallized flat areas, isolated from the remaining circuitry on an outer surface of such a module with a supply line to the circuit, are known from prior art. The supply line, where appropriate, may be accomplished by means of a vertical through-connection (“via”) through one of the substrates.
DE 691 18 060 T2, for example, discloses a microwave radar transmitter/receiver in flip-chip technology on the basis of a monolithically integrated microwave circuit (MMIC), which is equipped with such a patch antenna for transmission and reception of a close-range radar signal. More general explanations of patch antennas may be found in R. E. Munson, “Conformed Microstrip Antennas and Microstrip Phased Arrays”, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, Vol. 22, 1975, pp. 74-78, or in J. F. Zurcher, F. E. Gardiol, Broadband Patch Antennas, Boston, Artech House Inc., 1995.
The antennas known from prior art have the property of accomplishing a vertical radiation at a relatively large angle. For certain applications, however, lateral radiation and/or reception by means of all-around radiation is desirable.